paired."

Wordsworth employs the word "shout" in several of his Cuckoo descriptions. See The Excursion, ii. l. 346-348 and vii. l. 408; also the following from Yes! it was the Mountain Echo:

    Yes! it was the mountain echo,
    Solitary, clear, profound,
    Answering to the shouting Cuckoo;
    Giving to her sound for sound.

NUTTING

  ———It seems a day
  (I speak of one from many singled out),
  One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
  When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
  I left our cottage threshold, sallying forth 5
  With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung,
  A nutting-crook in hand, and turned my steps
  Toward some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
  Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds,
  Which for that service had been husbanded, 10
  By exhortation of my frugal Dame,—
  Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
  At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, and, in truth,
  More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks,
  Through beds of matted fern and tangled thickets, 15
  Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
  Unvisited, where not a broken bough
  Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
  Of devastation; but the hazels rose
  Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung, 20
  A virgin scene! A little while I stood,
  Breathing with such suppression of the heart
  As joy delights in; and with wise restraint
  Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
  The banquet; or beneath the trees I sate 25
  Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;
  A temper known to those, who, after long
  And weary expectation, have been blest
  With sudden happiness beyond all hope.
  Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves 30
  The violets of five seasons reappear
  And fade, unseen by any human eye;
  Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
  Forever; and I saw the sparkling foam,
  And, with my cheek on one of those green stones 35
  That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees,
  Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep,
  I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,
  In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
  Tribute to ease; and of its joy secure, 40
  The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
  Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,
  And on the vacant air. Then up I rose,
  And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash
  And merciless ravage: and the shady nook 45
  Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
  Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
  Their quiet being: and unless I now
  Confound my present feelings with the past,
  Ere from the mutilated bower I turned 50
  Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
  I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
  The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.—
  Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
  In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand 55
  Touch,—for there is a spirit in the woods.

5. OUR COTTAGE THRESHOLD. "The house at which I was boarded during the time I was at school." (Wordsworth's note, 1800). The school was the Hawkshead School.

9. TRICKED OUT=dressed. The verb "to trick"="to dress" is derived probably from the noun, "trick" in the sense of 'a dexterous artifice,' 'a touch.' See "Century Dictionary."

CAST-OFF WEEDS=cast-off clothes. Wordsworth originally wrote 'of
Beggar's weeds.' What prompted him to change the expression?

10. FOR THAT SERVICE. i.e., for nutting.

12-13. OF POWER TO SMILE AT THORNS=able to defy, etc. Not because of their strength, but because so ragged that additional rents were of small account.

21. VIRGIN=unmarred, undevastated.

31. Explain the line. Notice the poetical way in which the poet conveys the idea of solitude, (l. 30-32).

33. FAIRY WATER-BREAKS=wavelets, ripples. Cf.:—

         Many a silvery water-break
         Above the golden gravel.
                         Tennyson, The Brook.

36. FLEECED WITH MOSS. Suggest a reason why the term "fleeced" has peculiar appropriateness here.

39-40. Paraphrase these lines to bring out their meaning.

43-48. THEN UP I ROSE. Contrast this active exuberant pleasure not unmixed with pain with the passive meditative joy that the preceding lines express.

47-48. PATIENTLY GAVE UP THEIR QUIET BEING. Notice the attribution of life to inanimate nature. Wordsworth constantly held that there was a mind and all the attributes of mind in nature. Cf. l. 56, "for there is a spirit in the woods."

53. AND SAW THE INTRUDING SKY. Bring out the force of this passage.

54. THEN, DEAREST MAIDEN. This is a reference to the poet's Sister, Dorothy Wordsworth.

56. FOR THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE WOODS. Cf. Tintern Abbey, 101 f.

      A motion and a spirit that impels
      All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
      And rolls through all things.

INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS

  Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
  Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
  And giv'st to forms and images a breath
  And everlasting motion! not in vain,
  By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn 5
  Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
  The passions that build up our human soul;
  Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man:
  But with high objects, with enduring things,
  With life and nature: purifying thus 10
  The elements of feeling and of thought,
  And sanctifying by such discipline
  Both pain and fear,—until we recognize
  A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

  Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me 15
  With stinted kindness. In November days,
  When vapors rolling down the valleys made
  A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
  At noon; and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
  When, by the margin of the trembling lake, 20
  Beneath the gloomy hills, homeward I went
  In solitude, such intercourse was mine:
  Mine was it in the fields both day and night,
  And by the waters, all the summer long.
  And in the frosty season, when the sun 25
  Was set, and, visible for many a mile,
  The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
  I heeded not the summons: happy time
  It was indeed for all of us; for me
  It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud 30
  The village clock tolled six—I wheeled about,
  Proud and exulting like an untired horse,
  That cares not for his home,—All shod with steel
  We hissed along the polished ice, in games
  Confederate, imitative of the chase 35
  And woodland pleasures,—the resounding